


What brings you here so late?

by Naraht



Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child
Genre: Bells, Gen, impressionistic, stranger danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the ways the tale might be told, and one in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What brings you here so late?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Measured_Words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/gifts).



The location of the road is not important. It could be remote: the Outer Hebrides, nothing but sea and turf and sky, the road leading endlessly on over rolling hills. Sheep drifting like moving milestones. Clouds the only sentinels. But it could just as easily be London: an unregarded suburban Tube station, shutters already rolled down like closed eyes. Kebab shop; nail salon; Polish grocery. All of them closed against the tide of the street. Blowing litter fluttering with false gaiety.

Is it late? It is the longest day of the year. In the Hebrides it could be nearly midnight, pink shreds heralding the death of a sunset overhead. Even in London it is later than good people are out on the streets.

Nowadays there are no more knights, not the kind from fairy tales. Everyone knows that. Nonetheless the man exists, and his forms are eternal. Sometimes he is a Baronet, but he needn't be. An uncle's valet will do just as well; so will a bin man. Sometimes he is even a woman.

Always there is a child. The child is the fixed point around whom the whole of the tale orbits. The child need not be particularly good, nor even particularly clever. To be crafty is a different thing entirely; this is a story that the Artful Dodger might tell. A question; a refusal. The question is not important; the answer is.

Do you like the bells? I do. (I do.) Church bells, cow bells, the great bell of Bow. Glockenspiel, gamelan, celeste. Car alarms; fire drills; the siren of the panda car coming around the corner. Ring a doorbell and run away. The clang of railway crossings; division bells; Morris men pounding out the shape of the seasons; _time, gentlemen, please_.

Eight bells for the sailor. One stroke on the Lutine Bell when the news arrives home. And so to hell by return of post.

Tintinnabulation.

This time it is the ring of a mobile phone that breaks the spell. Radiohead, _Morning Bell_ , at 21.49 on a Wednesday evening.

"Just getting on the bus," says the child, pulling up his hoodie, and walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on [The False Knight on the Road](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fause_Knight_Upon_the_Road), which I've always found fascinating. I was inspired in particular by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior's [version](http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/steeleye.span/songs/falseknightontheroad.html), though there may be ideas creeping in from other versions as well.
> 
> Nine words of this story are shamelessly borrowed from elsewhere.


End file.
